Of Spirits and Brotherhood
by Emily1982
Summary: What value religion over brotherhood? (response to The Multiple Personality Challenge on KAfanfic group)


Title: Of Spirits and Brotherhood

Author: FlowrGirlEm

Disclaimer: They're not mine – well, apart from Kay, kind of.

Of Spirits and Brotherhood

'I hate this time of year,' Gawain groaned, casting a dark glance at the howling wind and the frost creeping up the tavern windows. 'It's always cold, it's wet, it never gets light…'

'Yeah.' Next to him, Galahad nodded in agreement. 'It – '

'-wasn't like this back home,' several of those seated at the same table finished with him, to laughter from those who hadn't been quick enough to join in.

'Well, it wasn't,' Galahad muttered mutinously, then turned his glare on Gawain when the other knight kicked him under the table in reprimand. Gawain shrugged and smiled back pleasantly – after five years' service, he'd become fairly impervious to Galahad's moods. Someone had to be, after all.

'It could be worse,' Kay offered from across the table. As a range of gazes from mildly curious to utterly incredulous turned his way, he added, 'we could be outside instead of in here, like last year.'

Last year. The memory was enough to make Gawain shiver. They'd been on their way from their original posting at a fortress which had been razed to the ground under highly suspicious circumstances, to their current one on Hadrian's Wall. It had been a long trek, made worse by marauding parties of Woads, driving blizzards, fevers, and the death of three knights on the road. This year was definitely better, but that didn't change the undeniable truth that it was still pretty awful.

'When're the others due back?' he asked, regretting ever bringing up the weather in the first place.

'Tonight. Soon.' Tristan looked up from his newly – and mysteriously – acquired hawk to offer the usual mono-syllabic answer he reserved for inane questions. Which, fair enough, it had been, but Gawain was getting sick of having that tone turned on him so frequently, especially since he had thought they were becoming friends.

'Oh, good. Just what we need, Lancelot getting all the women cos they've missed him, and complaining about the weather…' Clearly Galahad had yet to get over his sulk, Gawain thought absently as several hands came up to smack him gently – but effectively – into silence.

'No wonder Arthur never takes you on his scouting training,' Bors commented. 'He'd never get enough peace to actually do it.'

That got another glare from Galahad, and Gawain casting round for a distraction before he was forced to remove his young friend from the tavern for his own safety. His eyes lit on a barmaid glancing their way and he gestured to her enthusiastically.

'Good evening.' She smiled, half dropping into a curtsey. New then – the women soon got tired enough of being grabbed by every passing knight to stop bothering with those kinds of signs of respect.

'Evening, Loryn.' Tristan smiled back at her as she placed a mug in front of him, and Gawain blinked in surprise at his friend. The other knight held his gaze, his own expression blank, until Gawain shook his head, half in amusement, half in exasperation. Friendship with Tristan, apparently, would little resemble friendship with Galahad, who shared everything the moment it happened.

'Tristan.' Loryn inclined her head slightly towards him. 'And what has you all so melancholy tonight?'

'The weather, as usual.' Gawain said it with a grin, not wanting to offend the woman, since the Britons in the garrisons could be fiercely protective of their country.

'It is bleak,' she agreed. 'But Samhain falls in only two days - there will be festivities then, to raise your spirits.'

At that, even Galahad brightened a little. 'You're celebrating?' The festivals common in Britain weren't the same as those they'd celebrated in Sarmatia, but they were close enough to feel like home. Not that they'd had many – they'd had a bad experience with the commander of their last garrison when they'd tried, and not done so since.

'Don't the commanders mind?' Gawain asked, trying to remember if he'd seen any evidence one way or the other, then recalling that they hadn't actually been in the garrison for any of the major festivals since they'd arrived.

Loryn shrugged. 'What they don't know doesn't hurt them.' She opened her mouth to continue, but at the same moment, a voice yelled, 'they're in!' and whatever she would have said was lost in the shuffle of rising knights.

Being closest to the door, Gawain was first into the courtyard as three horses clattered in and the squires moved forward to take their reins. He just had time to think that surely four horses had ridden out three days ago, before he found himself facing a dark-eyed, blood-stained Lancelot as the other knight twisted heavily from his horse.

'What happened?' he asked, worry sinking over him. 'You were only supposed to be training.'

'Tell that to the fucking Woads,' Lancelot bit off sharply, his words brittle with anger and ill-concealed pain. He pulled his bow from his saddle with jerky movements that sent his horse into agitated side-stepping, and added, 'they ambushed us back in the forest.'

'Is everyone all right?' Gawain glanced round the courtyard. More knights had arrived from the tavern, eager to welcome their commander back, but Arthur was already deep in conversation with the garrison commander, their shadows flickering together in the flames of the torches.

Lancelot's gaze followed Gawain's, and when their eyes met again, Lancelot's were improbably darker. 'Agravaine's dead,' he said, his voice flat.

'He's – what – wait –' Gawain was still stumbling over words, trying to absorb the news, when Lancelot handed his horse to a squire and pushed roughly away through the crowd, too fast for Gawain to follow, though he made half a move to do so, before cutting himself off in favour of watching the man disappear.

What kind of shitty luck was that? They'd escaped their last battle with nothing worse than a broken arm, and now one was killed on a training exercise. He hadn't known Agravaine all that well – the man had been worse than Tristan for keeping to himself – but they'd come across from Sarmatia on the same boat and…

Gawain shook the memories away. Be grateful it hadn't been a closer friend, and watch the backs of those who were a little more carefully next time.

Lancelot threw himself onto his bed and instantly regretted it as the movement jarred all the way up his spine and into his bruised shoulder. He took a deep breath against the pain and pressed his face into the covers.

Fucking disastrous day that had been: Agravaine dead, Gareth in the surgeon's tent, eyes glassy and skin pale, Arthur gone from friend to commander too fast for Lancelot to even realise it was happening… He took another deep breath, which rattled in much less steadily than the first had, and realised, to his own amazement, that he was crying.

Well, that made sense, in a way, he thought, rolling over and reaching up a shaking hand to wipe his face. Everything had happened so fast, and with such urgency that it was already beginning to blur into nothing but a rush of screaming and blood. There'd been no time to think, or panic, acting on pure adrenalin and training, and now he didn't need either of those, there was too much time.

He breathed in again, and out slowly, willing the shaking and the tears away. They were no good now, and he clearly was not going to get the half hour of peace he had come to the knights' quarters for, so no point hiding there all day. Arthur would be in with the command for hours, and some of the knights still turned to thoughts of revenge far too quickly. Someone had to go out and be reassuring, and stop them, and it was damn sure Agravaine and Gareth wouldn't be doing it.

Sighing, Lancelot pulled himself up and reached for a cloth to wash away the blood.

If the knights had been melancholy earlier, Gawain thought, it was nothing compared to the gloom that fell over the fortress as news of Agravaine and Gareth spread. Lancelot was moving through the knights, speaking to everyone, reassuring, Gawain supposed. He hoped no-one was looking at the other man too closely, though, since every time Lancelot happened to turn towards him, the darkness in his gaze was overwhelming.

There was also still no sign of Arthur, which helped neither the knights nor Lancelot. There was some kind of strange, strong bond between the two of them, and everyone had noticed it. It was the main reason Lancelot had gone on scouting practice, since the man would probably never be much good at it – didn't have the patience, for one thing. For all that it occasionally led to somewhat pointless expeditions such as that one, though, whatever bound them clearly worked, although the jittery, over-active state Lancelot went into whenever Arthur rode out without him didn't bode well for the future.

'You all right?' Galahad, snapped out of his sulk by the news, asked, concern in his eyes.

Gawain nodded and started into the crowd. 'Just going to rescue Lancelot.'

They were all sent out the next day, combing along the river bank for Woads and trails and finding neither, to no-one's real surprise.

When they trooped back into the fort, well after dark, worn out and dispirited, the surgeon met them with the news that Gareth had died.

That was all it took to splinter the knights, into anger, grief, revenge, sadness, or just defeated exhaustion.

Lancelot, standing against his horse, feeling the tug of defeat, watched Arthur trying to pull the knights back together, and really realised, for the first time in five years, just how fragile the unity and brotherhood they were already becoming known for actually was.

He'd never thought about it before – Arthur just had something that made people follow him, and had never seemed to actually need to do anything about it before. The faces of the knights in the courtyard said something else though. Although some had been with him almost since the beginning, the entire body of knights had only been together under Arthur for two years, and clearly two years weren't enough to hold them against the kind of angry grief that swirled round the courtyard.

When Arthur finally dismissed them all with a weary injunction to get some rest and to be around for the burials the next day, Lancelot felt something like relief at not having to watch the struggle any longer. He handed his horse off to a squire and crossed the courtyard rapidly, catching Arthur before he could be swept away by the command again.

Arthur's face was pale with exhaustion, his expression drawn with worry, and Lancelot was too tired to manage his usual cheering tone. Instead, he slung his arm around his friend's shoulders and turned them both towards Arthur's quarters. 'A drink, then sleep,' he proposed. 'Everything will look brighter come morning.'

The look Arthur gave him was far from convinced, but he went anyway.

The burials were held at sundown, as many knights could remember Gareth commenting that the barriers between the worlds of the living and the dead were weaker at the change of the day.

Following tradition, each of the knights spilled a little wine over the graves, offering appeasement to any gods nearby, and adding their own words for their fallen comrades. For this part, Arthur stood aside, as he always did, his head bowed in what Gawain assumed was prayer. Unless he was just contemplating how untidy the grass in the graveyard had become of late. Gawain stifled the inappropriate laugh that threatened at that thought. He'd never been very good with solemn occasions.

Gradually the knights began to drift away, so that the sun blazed out over a small group still standing in a half circle round the graves.

In the twilight, Lancelot looked up to the sky. 'Samhain tonight,' he commented, his voice soft.

Gawain followed his friend's gaze to the gradually emerging full moon. 'A good night to be travelling their road,' he commented. Remembering Loryn's words, he added, 'we should celebrate.'

Both Arthur and Lancelot turned to look at him, their expressions hard to read in the darkness and flickering torch-light.

'It's the time for saying farewell,' he told Arthur, then continued to Lancelot, 'the fortress residents have a celebration.'

'Does the command know?' Lancelot asked, his gaze shifting across to Arthur.

'They don't need to.' Tristan's voice in the dark almost startled Gawain, even though he knew the man was there.

'I'm not hearing this,' Arthur said firmly, and turned to walk a little away from them.

The torches conveniently chose that moment to blaze high with a passing wind, but Gawain hardly needed them to see Lancelot's face fall in disappointment, though Arthur's refusal could hardly have come as a surprise. He might be tolerant of their practices, whenever possible, but Arthur still kept himself distant from anything that bore traces of non-Christianity. It was part of the unspoken compromise that also freed them from the endless sermons and attempts to convert them to Christianity to which their previous commander had subjected them on a monotonously regular basis.

'Why not?' Lancelot shrugged his approval. 'Spread the word.'

It wasn't a celebration in the way they'd have celebrated back in Sarmatia, Lancelot thought later, though he supposed the mere fact of it being held in a Roman-Christian fort would do that.

They were mostly concealed in a small yard between that back of the tavern and the blacksmith's, overlooked by knights' quarters, so they were unlikely to be seen. Unlikely to be heard either, though that was more due to their own silence, since he thought every knight and almost every non-Roman resident of the fort was there. It was a subdued affair – they were passing wine round the circle surrounding the fire, to which they had earlier consigned those things they wished to be rid of with the passing of the old year.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of the usual music and singing, the ritual was more imbued with meaning than he had expected. Looking round the faces flickering in the firelight, Lancelot felt a sense of calm and unity that he hadn't felt amongst the knights since before their disastrous training expedition.

There was only one thing missing, and he mentally shook himself, telling himself sternly to stop looking for Arthur. He still sighed though. He'd never met anyone like Arthur before, so intensely tied to his beliefs that he couldn't set them aside even for one night. It was admirable, he supposed, but… We need him here.

Another sigh escaped him, drawing Gawain's exasperated glare. 'He's in the tavern, why don't you go and speak to him?' the other knight demanded in a hushed voice.

'Either that, or be quiet,' Bors put in from Lancelot's other side. 'You're getting as bad as Galahad.'

Too afraid of disturbing the peace, Lancelot merely used the height advantage that standing up gave him to glare at both of them, rather than saying something suitably cutting, then turned from the fire.

The darkness of torchlight after the brilliance of the fire caused him to stumble a little, but he caught his balance easily enough, his eyes adjusting so that he could see Arthur sitting alone, bent over a map.

'You should join us,' he called as he got closer, and had the unusual satisfaction of seeing Arthur startle.

'No more than you should join in an Easter celebration.' Arthur gestured for Lancelot to join him.

He shrugged away Arthur's comment. 'You'd be safe now. We're only sitting round the fire. The spirits have left.'

In truth, for all that the ritual had felt meaningful, the spirits had never been there. The blacksmith, who'd conducted the ceremonies, had called them down, but Lancelot hadn't felt the normal shiver of their presence, and he'd seen the same lack on several other faces. He remembered Bors saying – his favourite taunt to Romans – that the Christian God didn't live in Britain, and felt a rush of recognition for the words. It seemed their own gods didn't either, or if they did, they didn't live near Hadrian's Wall.

'Lancelot?' Arthur was looking at him with concern.

'Sorry. Somewhere else.' Lancelot dragged his attention back. 'What did you say?'

'Why do you want me to join in? I don't force you to become Christians, and by rights I should be trying.'

'I'm not asking you to stop being a Christian. Just… everyone's together, you should be there.' Arthur looked back silently. 'I promise, no sacrifices, no dancing naked…' It was an old joke, but Arthur didn't laugh. Frustrated and mildly irritated, Lancelot rose. 'Fine. Sit here and study your maps. I'll be with the men if you need me.'

He felt Gawain's glance sharp on him as he took his seat again, but he stared into the fire, ignoring the other knight. Gawain bore it for what felt like a very long time but probably wasn't, then asked, 'so?'

Lancelot shook his head. 'Not coming,' he said, hoping his voice conveyed the impression that enquiring further would be hazardous to the enquirer's health.

As he spoke, the toe of a boot prodded him in the side. Shifting away from it automatically, he looked up, then remembered that he wasn't a bat and therefore couldn't see in the dark.

Not that he needed to, as the owner of the boot sat down in the space Lancelot's shifting had created.

'I suppose sometimes Christianity might not have all the answers,' Arthur said.

As the fire died away, the knights were united once more.


End file.
